The Chain
I have chosen the song “The Chain” for the self-similarity matrix, because there is a two distinct sections in the song. The first section consists of the main verse and the chorus and the second sections is the outro of the song.
The outro starts around the three minute mark, when all instruments go silent, except for the drums. Then an iconic bass section starts and after 20 seconds a guitar solo accompanies the drums and the bass. When the vocals start in the final part of the outro, you can see a clear shift in timbre in the final section.
Introduction to Fleetwood Mac and the purpose of the corpus
My corpus consists of the 17 studio albums released by the band Fleetwood Mac. Also known in the earlier years as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. I choose this corpus, because Fleetwood Mac is my favorite musical artist and the band has topped my Spotify wrapped ever since I got a Spotify subscription a few years ago. I think this corpus will be interesting, because there have been a lot of changes to the bands line-up, especially in their earlier years. Below is a list of the albums and the changes of the band members (and their primary instruments) that helped create the album. Only two band members, Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass), have been in the band since the start and have performed on every album. Which is why their names are not included in the list.
Albums and the changes in band line-ups
+ Peter Green (guitar/ lead and backing vocals), Jeremy Spencer (slide guitar/ piano /lead and backing vocals),
Fleetwood Mac (1968) (Also known as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac)
Mr. Wonderful (1968)
+ Danny Kirwan (guitar/ lead and backing vocals)
- Then Play On (1969)
- Peter Green
- Kiln House (1970)
- Jeremy Spencer + Bob Welch (guitar/ lead and backing vocals), Christine McVie (keyboards/ lead and backing vocals)
Future Games (1971)
Bare Trees (1972)
- Danny Kirwan + Bob Weston (lead guitar/ backing vocals), Dave Walker (lead and backing vocals/ harmonica)
- Penguin (1973)
- Dave Walker
- Mystery to Me (1973)
- Bob Weston
- Heroes Are Hard to Find (1974)
- Bob Welch + Lindsey Buckingham (guitar/ lead and backing vocals), Stevie Nicks (lead and backing vocals/ tambourine)
Fleetwood Mac (1975) (Also known as “The White Album”)
Rumours (1977)
Tusk (1979)
Mirage (1982)
Tango in the Night (1987)
- Lindsey Buckingham + Billy Burnette (rhythm guitar/ backing and lead vocals), Rick Vito (lead guitar/ backing and lead vocals)
- Behind the Mask (1990)
- Stevie Nicks, Rick Vito + Bekka Bramlett (lead and backing vocals), Dave Mason (lead guitar/ backing and lead vocals)
- Time (1995)
- Billy Burnette, Bekka Bramlett, Dave Mason, Christine McVie + Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks
- Say You Will (2003)
The band started out as a blues band, but since the addition of Christine McVie after the album “Kiln House” the style of the band shifted to rock. I expect there to be quite a few differences between these earlier albums and the others. Their second self-titled album was the breakthrough for the band and got them global success. This was the first album released since the addition of the duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The members of the band that released this album is the most well known line-up and brought the band the most success in the 5 albums they released as a core. It will be interesting to look at what this line-up did different, that brought them this success.
To make it easier for comparing these different line-ups I will group them as follows: Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac (Fleetwood Mac I - Kiln House), Bob Welch’s Fleetwood Mac (Future Gamse - Heroes Are Hard to Find), Buckingham Nicks Fleetwood Mac (Fleetwood Mac II - Tango in the Night, and Say You Will) and finally Billy Burnette’s Fleetwood Mac (Behind the Mask and Time).
Album valence and energy comparison.
image
This plot shows the valence versus the energy of each track on each album. The popularity of the track is given by the size of the dot and the colour represents if the song is in a minor or major key.
Tracks with high valence sound more positive, while tracks with low valence sound more negative. The energy of a track represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity.
Every album since Mirage sounds more positive, while albums before that had a more spread out valence.
The album Rumours is the most popular albums, having a lot of high energy songs and a spread out valence. But just having high energy songs is not enough to make an album popular, this can be seen on the albums Bare Trees and Penguin.
Chromagram of 3 different versions of Landslide
Studio version acoustic guitar with electric guitar solo
Live 1975 version electric guitar solo replaced by piano solo
Live 1997 version adjusted guitar solo that is played by acoustic guitar. making the entire song played only by an acoustic guitar
not sure why the second one is smaller